Dalip Singh Saund
My Mother India

VII. JALLIANWALLA MASSACRE AT AMRITSAR

IN THIS chapter we shall relate briefly the story of what occurred in
Punjab during the troubled days of 1919. These incidents, popularly
known as "the Punjab wrongs," led to far-reaching consequences in the
relationship between England and India, and knowledge of them is very
necessary for a proper understanding of what has happened in India
since. We shall begin with the beginning of the World War and follow
the various incidents in the sequence of their occurrence.

It is a matter of common knowledge now that the people of India
supported the British Empire throughout the period of the war in a
very liberal and enthusiastic manner. "India's contributions to the
war both in its quota of man-force and money were far beyond the
capacity of its poor inhabitants." Leaders of all states of opinion
joined hands to assist the Empire in its time of need. It has been
stated before that Gandhi overworked in the capacity as an honorary
recruiting officer until he contracted dysentery, which at one time
threatened to prove fatal.

India was "bled white" in order to win the war. But for her
support in men and money England would have suffered greatly in
prestige. Except for Indian troops the German advance to Paris in the
fall of 1914 might not have been checked. The official publication,
"India's Contribution to the Great War," describes the work of the
Indian troops thus:

"The Indian Corps reached France in the nick of time and helped
to stem the great German thrust towards Ypres and the Channel
Ports during the Autumn of 1914. These were the only trained
reinforcements immediately available in any part of the British
Empire and right worthily they played their part. "In Egypt and
Palestine, in Mesopotamia, Persia, East and West Africa and in
subsidiary theatres they shared with their British and Dominion
comrades the attainment of final victory. [Page 221. Quoted from
Lajpat Rai's Unhappy India.]

While the issue of the war still seemed doubtful, the British
Parliament, in order to induce the people of India to still greater
efforts in their support of the Empire, held out definite promises of
self-government to India after the war as a reward for their loyalty.
Mr. Montague, His Majesty's Secretary of State for India, made the
following announcement on August 20, 1917:

"The policy of His Majesty's Government with which the
Government of India are in complete accord, is that of the
increasing association of Indians in every branch of the
administration and the gradual development of self-governing
institutions with a view to the progressive realisation of
responsible government in India as an integral part of the
British Empire. They have decided that substantial steps in this
direction should be taken as soon as possible, . . . "

The text of the above announcement was widely published in the
entire press of India. Then followed the famous message of President
Woodrow Wilson to the Congress with its definite pledge of
"self-determination" to subordinate nations. This helped to brighten
still more India's hopes for home-rule.

Naturally, after the Armistice was signed, the people of India
expected the fulfilment of the war promises. "But the British
Government, anticipating that soon after the war ended there would be
a loud clamor in the country for home-rule, gave instead of
self-government the Rowlatt Act, which was designed to stifle the
nationalistic spirit in its infancy." The act gave unlimited power to
the police to prohibit public assemblies, to order indiscriminate
searches of private homes, to make arrests without notification, and
so forth. "Its main purpose was in such a manner to strengthen the
authority of the police and to enable them to root out of the country
every form of liberal and independent thought." The plans of the
British Bureaucracy were, however, defeated in their entirety, because
the passage of the act did not go through the Legislative Assembly as
smoothly as was expected. The whole country cried out in one voice
against the Rowlatt Act, but it was passed by the British Government
of India in the teeth of the unanimous opposition of all elected as
well as government appointed Indian members of the Legislative
Council.

This was once again followed by mass meetings and parades in
protest, petitions to the British Parliament, delegations to the
Viceroy, and a nation-wide demonstration against the Rowlatt Act. But
the Government altogether ignored the sentiments of the country in
this matter, an attitude which in turn helped to inflame the masses
still more.

Gandhi considered the existence of the act on the statute books of
India a national humiliation, and in protest he ordered the people of
India to observe April 6, 1919, as a day of fast and national
hartal. Hartal is the sign of deep mourning, during which the whole
business of the country is stopped and the people wander about the
streets in grief and lamentation. It was observed in ancient times
only at the death of popular kings or on the occasion of some other
very serious national calamity.

The response to Gandhi's appeal for the hartal was very general. It
was surprising how quickly the sentiment of national consciousness had
spread throughout the country. Overnight Gandhi's name was on the lips
of everybody, and even the most ignorant countrywomen were talking
about the Rowlatt Act. I remember that on the afternoon of April the
6th, while I was walking toward the site of the mass meeting in my
town, the like of which were being held all over India, and at which
resolutions of protest against the Rowlatt Act were passed, I saw a
girl of six nearly collapse on the street. After I had picked her up,
and she had rested from the heat of the sun, I asked her who she was
and where she was going. The little girl replied: "I am the daughter
of Bharat Mata (Mother India) and I am going to the funeral of Daulat
(Rowlatt). Mahatma Dandhi (Gandhi) has called me."

The day passed quite peacefully except for slight disturbances in a
few places. But the excitement throughout the country, particularly in
the Punjab, was very great. The situation was so tense that Gandhi
sent his strong admonitions of non-violence to his people in a
continual stream. The activity at Amritsar started when, on the
morning of April 10th the English Commissioner invited Dr. Kitchlew
and Dr. Satyapal, the two popular young leaders of the city, to his
residence and ordered their deportation to some unknown place. When it
became known that their leaders had been treacherously removed the
citizens went on a sudden hartal, and a huge mob began to gather in
front of the main city gate. The mob soon organized itself into a
procession, which started to move toward the District Commissioner's
residence to request the restoration of Doctors Kitchlew and
Satyapal. While crossing the railroad bridge, the procession was met
by armed police who soon caused six casualties among the peaceful,
unarmed mob. The mob soon turned back and fell upon the city in a wild
fury. It divided itself into different groups and expended its rage by
setting fire to the city hall, two English banks, and a local
Christian church. Two bank managers, the only Englishmen present in
town on that day, were cruelly murdered. An English nurse who happened
to be passing through a narrow street was also assaulted by the mob,
but was soon rescued by the citizens and carried to a place of safety.
Later on, this benevolent Christian lady greatly endeared herself to
the people of Amritsar by refusing to accept any other indemnity for
the assault than the price of her wrist watch which was lost in the
scramble.

Immediately after the news of Amritsar reached the other towns in
the province, similar outbreaks of popular frenzy occurred in many
places, with this difference however, that at no other place besides
Amritsar were English residents injured. There were casualties on the
side of the mob everywhere, but none on the side of the English. On
April 11th the authority of the civil government was withdrawn, and
martial law was declared in most sections of the province of Punjab.

Thus did the trouble begin that resulted in the massacre of
Amritsar. On that fatal day, April 13th, a mass meeting had been
announced to take place in Jallianwalla Bagh, an open enclosure in the
heart of the city of Amritsar. As it happened, April 13th was also the
Baisakhi day, which is observed all over India as a day of national
festival. Large crowds of country people had gathered into the city on
that account. On the morning of the 13th, General Dyer, the
commanding officer of the city, issued from the headquarters an order
prohibiting the Jallianwalla Bagh meeting, and notices to that effect
were posted in several places in the city. It should be mentioned here
that unlike the towns of America, there were in Amritsar at the time
no universally read daily papers which could convey the Commanding
Officer's order all around in the short interval between its issue and
the time of the meeting. Under these circumstances General Dyer's
prohibitory order could reach only a small fraction of the people in
the city.

Now let us come to the scene of the meeting. Peo- ple began to
assemble in Jallianwalla Bagh at 3 o'clock. There were old men, women
who carried babies in their arms, and children who held toys in their
hands. They were all dressed in their holiday gala-dresses. "While a
few had come there to attend the meeting knowingly, the majority had
just followed the crowd and drifted in the Bagh out of simple
curiosity." Whatever may have been its nature otherwise, it is
certain that the crowd at the Jallianwalla was not composed of bloody
revolutionists. Not one of them carried even a walking stick. They had
assembled there in the open inclosure peacefully to listen to speeches
and perhaps at the end to pass a few resolutions. At four o'clock the
meeting was called to order, and the speeches began. No more than
forty minutes of this peaceful gathering, and the audience were
listening in an attentive and orderly manner to the speaker who stood
on a raised platform in the center, when General Dyer walked in with
his band of thirty soldiers and suddenly opened fire on the crowd
without giving them any warning or chance to disperse. There was a
sudden wild skirmish in the inclosure. People began to run toward all
sides to save their lives; those who fell down were run over by the
rest and crushed under their weight. Others who attempted to escape by
leaping over the low wall on the east end were shot dead by the fire
from the general's squad. As the crowd centered near the only escape
from the unfinished low wall, the general directed his shots there. He
aimed where the crowd was the thickest, and inside of the fifteen
minutes during which his ammunition lasted he had killed at least
eight hundred men, women, and children and wounded many times that
number.

It was already late afternoon when General Dyer, his ammunition
having run out, departed to his headquarters without providing any
kind of succor or medical aid to the wounded who lay bleeding and
helpless at the scene of slaughter. Before the people of the
neighborhood recovered from their consternation, it had alrady begun
to get dark. As one of the rules of martial law strictly forbade
walking in the streets of Amritsar after dark, it was impossible for
any person or group of persons to bring organized relief to the
wounded at Jallianwalla. The horrible agonies of those that lay in the
Bagh disabled and deserted were heard with grim patience all through
the night by the faithful wife Rattan Devi, when she sat there "in the
midst of that ghastly human carnival" holding in her lap the dead body
of her beloved husband. She had run to the scene after the shooting in
a mad search for her husband. After she had looked underneath a dozen
heaps of dead bodies and stumbled over many others, her eyes were
drawn to the spot where her husband's dead body lay flat on the
ground. Rattan Devi's husband was already dead and beyond human
aid. The devoted wife could not restore the dead man to life, but how
could she afford to leave his lifeless body in the stark neighborhood
over night? She was too weak to carry it home all by herself and there
was no aid available. So she sat there through the night holding a
dead man in her lap.

The horrors of that night of suffering were related by Rattan Devi
in her evidence before the Indian National Congress sub-committee, in
which she described "the fearful agony of dying human beings, who kept
crying for drinks of water all through the night." No friendly aid
came to these departing souls in their last hours of deep
distress. Afraid of General Dyer's deadly vengeance their fellowmen
had stayed away, while dogs from the neighboring streets wandered
freely inside the Bagh to feast on the bleeding human bodies.

At the following session of the Indian National Congress which was
held at Amritsar, I myself saw at its exhibition twenty pairs of
little shoes, belonging to babies from a few months to a year
old. These had been picked up in the Jallianwalla Bagh by various
persons after the shooting, and they belonged to twenty innocent
babies in their mothers' laps who had been completely obliterated in
the mad scramble that had accompanied the shooting. All that was left
of these children was those tiny shoes. May God bless the souls of the
dear little ones and many others who fell victims to the haughty
general's bloody mood on the thirteenth of April, 1919, at
Jallianwalla Bagh.

Later, when General Dyer was cross-examined before Lord Hunter's
Committee, which was appointed by the British Parliament to report on
Punjab disturbances, he testified to the following:

1. That there was no provocation on the part of the people of
Amritsar for the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre either on the day of the
shooting or immediately before it. He had the situation well in hand
and the atmosphere was quite calm and peaceful.

2. That his order prohibiting the meeting was issued the morning
before the meeting and reached only a fraction of the people in
Amritsar on that festival day of the thirteenth.

3. That when he arrived on the scene of the meeting with his squad,
he found the people listening to the speaker in a calm manner and
there was no show of resistance offered to him. On the other hand, on
seeing him enter the premises, the audience began to run off in all
directions.

4. That he opened fire at the assembled meeting without giving the
people any warning or chance to disperse, and he continued firing
while his ammunition lasted-all the time directing his shots at places
where the crowd was the thickest.

5. That he had brought a machine gun with him, which he had to
leave outside because the lane was too narrow for it to enter. And he
admitted that the casualties would have been much greater if he had
been able to use the machine gun.

6. That his reason for the massacre at the Jallianwalla was to
teach the people a lesson, and he did not stop shooting after the
crowd had begun to disperse because he was afraid they would laugh at
him. The general wanted to show the people the might of the British
rule.

7. That he did not think to or care to provide succor to the
wounded at Jallianwalla. It was not a part of his business.

Reproduced below is a part of General Dyer's testimony before Lord
Hunter's committee:

"Q. When you got into the Bagh what did you do? A. I opened fire.

Q. At once? A. Immediately. I had thought about the matter and
don't imagine it took me more than thirty seconds to make up my mind
as to what my duty was.

Q. How many people were in the crowd? A. I then estimated them
roughly at 5,000. I heard afterwards there were many more.

Q. On the assumption that there was that risk of people being in
the crowd who were not aware of the proclamation, did it not occur to
you that it was a proper measure to ask the crowd to disperse before
you took that step of actually firing? A. No, at the time I did not. I
merely felt that my orders had not been obeyed, that martial law was
flouted, and that it was my duty to immediately disperse by rifle
fire.

Q. When you left Rambagh [his headquarters] did it occur to you
that you might have to fire? A. Yes, I had considered the nature of
the duty that I might have to face.

Q. Did the crowd at once start to disperse as soon as you fired?
A. Immediately.

Q. Did you continue firing? A. Yes.

Q. What reason had you to suppose that if you had ordered the
assembly to leave the Bagh, they would not have done so without the
necessity of your firing and continuing firing for any length of time?
A. Yes, I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed them
perhaps even without firing.

Q. Why did you not have recourse to that? A. They would have all
come back and laughed at me, and I should have made what I considered
a fool of myself.

Q. And on counting the ammunition it was found that 1,650 rounds of
ammunition had been fired? A. Quite right.

Q. Supposing the passage was sufficient to allow the armoured cars
to go in, would you have opened fire with the machine guns? A. I
think, probably, yes.

Q. In that case the casualties would have been very much higher?
A. Yes.

Q. I take it that your idea in taking that action was to strike
terror? A. Call it what you like. I was going to punish them. My idea
from the military point of view was to make a wide impression."

During the course of its history mankind has witnessed many
massacres of a bloody and ruthless nature, but in every case before a
massacre occurred, there was a provocation of some kind. Jallianwalla
Bagh stands out unique in this respect-that it was an unprovoked,
premeditated and pre-arranged, coldblooded massacre of at least eight
hundred innocent men, women, and children, who were assembled in a
peaceful meeting on the day of their national festival, with no
thought of evil in their minds nor any desire to offer resistance of
any sort or kind to anybody.

The most interesting part of the story is that what what had
happened at Jallianwalla Bagh on the thirteenth of April was
considered so trivial and unimportant a matter that it took four
months for the news to reach official London. After the report of Lord
Hunter's committee had been published, and all the horrible details of
the massacre were fully disclosed, General Dyer was retired from the
military service on full pension. But on his return to England he was
handed a purse of ten thousand pounds sterling, which amount had been
raised by voluntary subscription by the English people to recompense
the general for his heroic work at Jallianwalla Bagh. Such was the
reaction of the English nation to the massacre.

Gandhi's interpretation of General Dyer's "heroism" is, however,
different. He writes:

"He [General Dyer] has called an unarmed crowd of men and
children-mostly holiday-makers-'a rebel army.' He believes
himself to be the saviour of Punjab in that he was able to shoot
down like rabbits men who were penned in an enclosure. Such a
man is unworthy of being considered a soldier. There was no
bravery in his action. He ran no risk. He shot without the
slightest opposition and without warning. This is not an `error
of judgment'. It is a paralysis of it in the face of fancied
danger. It is proof of criminal incapacity and heartlessness."

The reader will be in a position now to understand the meaning of
Mahatma Gandhi's letter to the Viceroy of India, dated August 1, 1920,
and quoted on page 114 in which Gandhi gave his reasons for his
decision not to cooperate with the British Government of India. It may
be recalled that one of Mahatma Gandhi's reasons was the "callous
disregard of the feelings of Indians" betrayed by the House of Lords.
It must be remembered here also that the massacre of Jallianwalla
occurred on April 13, 1919, and it was exactly a year and three months
later that Mahatma Gandhi made his decision to boycott the British
Government. During this interval he had persistently hoped for a
change in the British attitude.

The massacre at Jallianwalla was only one part of the awful
Punjab story. What occurred at Amritsar and other towns in the
province during the martial days of 1919 was even more shameful and
unworthy, "on account of the outrage of human dignity it involved."
The issuing of crawling orders and the throwing of bombs from
aeroplanes over peaceful towns constituted in part the doings of the
military and police during the unfortunate days of martial law. Nor
was that all. Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, the first woman president of India,
said while speaking on the "Punjab wrongs" before a large London
audience (Kingsway Hall, June 3, 1919):

"My sisters were flogged, they were stripped
naked; they were outraged."

The ingenuity of the English officials during the martial law
period in inventing fancy punishments showed itself conspicuously in
the town of Kasur where, according to the findings of the Congress
subcommittee,

"1. School boys and men were whipped, `with no particular object,'
and there was no question of any martial law offense. Prostitutes were
invited to witness the ceremony.

2. People were made to mark time and climb ladders.

3. Religious mendicants were washed with lime.
4. Those who failed to salute Europeans were made to rub their
roses on the ground.

6. Public gallows were erected which were later abandoned. In all,
eighteen persons were hanged in the Punjab during the martial law
regime, many of whom were totally innocent."

We shall give below the evidence of Gurdevi, the
widow of Mangal Jat, before the Congress sub-committee on what had
occured at Manianwalla:

"One day, during the Martial Law period, Mr. Bosworth Smith
gathered together all the males of over eight years at the Dacca
Dalla Bungalow, which is some miles from our village, in
connection with the investigations that were going on. Whilst
the men were at the Bungalow, he rode to our village, taking
back with him all the women who met him on the way carrying food
for their men at the Bungalow. Reaching the village, he went
around the lanes and ordered all women to come out of their
houses, himself forcing them out with sticks. He made us all
stand near the village Daira. The women folded their hands
before him. He beat some with his stick and spat at them and
used the foulest and most unmentionable language. He hit me
twice and spat in my face. . . .

"He repeatedly called us she-asses, bitches, flies and swines
and said: `You were in the same beds with your husbands; why did
you not prevent them from going out to do mischief ? Now your
skirts will be looked by the Police Constables'. He gave me a
kick also and ordered us to undergo the torture of holding our
ears by pass-our arms round the legs, whilst being bent double.

"This treatment was meted out to us in the absence of our men
who were at the Bungalow."

Cowardice, thy name is Bosworth Smith! Moral degradation in a human
being could not go any lower than this. Seach the entire history of
mankind, and you will fail to find the equal of this act in its
ferocity and barbarism. How curious! The world believes still that
England's mission in India is that of civilizing a backward people.

The Jallianwalla massacre and other "Punjab wrongs" gave a great
impetus to the nationalist movement in India. What the Indian National
Congress had failed to accomplish in its steady work of thirty- two
years, the Punjab persecutions and humiliations did in the course of a
few months. It has helped to arouse in the minds of the people of
India a powerful national consciousness. It has been truly said that
the blood of the martyrs at Jallianwalla Bagh has made the heart of
all India to bleed.

Those who ask the question, "Why does India revolt?" may find a
part of their answer in the word. "Jallianwalla Bagh."